to regulations as to dress and conduct which might distinguish them as such wherever they might be. In Rome, as early as 180 B.C., they were registered in the books of the ædiles, in order that their peculiar status might be the more perfectly defined.1

After Rome had grown into a world empire, the line between slave and serf, freedman and freeborn, tended to become obscure. At the same time, a thorough degradation of morals permeated all society, so that it was no longer possible to separate the immoral from the honourable. Prostitutes still formed a special class, but such regulation as continued to exist had for its chief purpose the collection of revenue from the earnings of the public prostitute. This end also was abandoned when a higher type of imperial authority realised the dishonour of public sharing in infamous gains. Under the Christian Emperors repressive laws were enacted, thus concluding definitely classical regulation of vice."

Modern writers have sometimes claimed that prostitution was "tolerated" in Rome and Greece as a means of combating the unnatural vice which

The origin of the special quarter and the special garb is probably to be found in the fact that the public women were originally "priestesses" of Venus, and lived in the precincts of the shrines and wore a garb indicating their religious office. The transition to the status of public slaves with the fading out of the religious idea can be easily understood.

• Parent-Duchâtelet, De la Prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 3d ed., vol. ii., 268.

was so common in ancient civilisation. It is a sufficient refutation of this position that not until a comparatively late date was unnatural vice considered an evil, while prostitution was permitted from the earliest times. Moreover, so numerous were the slave women devoted to infamy that it is difficult to conceive how any one can believe that it was dearth of "natural" vice that was responsible for the hideous development of unnatural vice that disfigured the history of decadent Greece and Rome.

Mediaval Regulation of Vice.-At the beginning of the Middle Ages the states of Western Europe pursued a strictly repressive policy with regard to prostitution. The capitularies of Charlemagne imposed upon the prostitute and those who sheltered her imprisonment, whipping, and exposure. For this severity, the legislation of the late Roman and Byzantine Emperors was no doubt partially responsible. A more potent influence was, however, exercised by the early Teutonic customs and laws. Tacitus states that in some German tribes women of unchaste life were punished by death. The Salic law prescribed banishment for them, and the laws of the Visigoths (600 A.D.) inflicted the penalty of beating with rods.

But as population increased and became more settled the treatment of the vicious underwent a gradual change. By the tenth century, the

persecution of the prostitute had practically ceased. Prostitution came to be tolerated, but under regulations that were aimed to divest it of the consequences that to the medieval mind seemed evil. In 1180 Henry II. gave a royal patent for the legalisation of public houses of prostitution in London. They were established in Hamburg in the year 1272; Regensburg, 1306; Zürich, 1314; Basel, 1356; Avignon, 1347; Vienna, 1384. The ordinance of St. Louis, 1254, and the laws of Naples of the eleventh and twelfth centuries reflect the severity of early Teutonic legislation. These laws were, however, merely the outcome of the religious zeal of the rulers; they did not represent the public sentiment of the time. They do not appear ever to have been systematically enforced.

Mediæval regulation is best understood by reference to the ends it was designed to meet. Preservation of the existing order of things was regarded as of cardinal importance. The integrity of the family was looked upon as vital; accordingly, the severest penalties were inflicted upon unchaste wives and daughters of burghers. It was believed that if provision were made for the satisfaction of the vicious impulses of the floating population, the family would be secured from invasion. Therefore the brothel was not only tolerated; it was considered a necessary and a useful adjunct to city life. This will account for the fact that the house of ill fame was often built

at public expense and managed on public account, and for the voting of funds for securing from abroad inmates for the public house. It also explains the condition sometimes imposed upon the citizen who leased such an establishment, that he should provide a sufficient number of suitable inmates.

It was also essential that public women should form a class absolutely distinct. They were normally secured from foreign countries, or, at any rate, from beyond the city's domain. They remained aliens; and if any woman from within the ranks of decent society fell from virtue, she became an alien in status and was for ever debarred from returning to her kin. They were required to live in a special quarter and wear a distinguishing mark upon their clothing, usually a yellow or red ribbon upon the sleeve, so that no mistake might be made as to their character.

There was no trace of the modern feeling that vice should be quite hidden from respectability, ignored by decent society. The prostitute played no mean rôle in the social life of the Middle Ages. As such, she took part in public processions, and even in sacred festivals. The brothel was bound to entertain notables who visited the city. In

The student of the origin of social customs will at once suspect a relation between the functions of public women at festivals and the orgies in celebration of certain pagan deities. As a fact, the connection would not be difficult to trace.

short, the Middle Ages believed vice to be nothing evil, so long as it showed its true colours.

The second aim of the mediæval legislator was to prevent the brothel from becoming a centre of disorder. At all times the prostitute and the outlaw have been natural allies. Wherever houses of ill fame were grouped in special quarters, thieves and cutthroats congregated, menacing the persons and property of the citizens."

It was the medieval policy to fix responsibility upon groups, rather than upon individuals. This idea appears in the regulation of prostitution. Sometimes the public women were organised in guilds, which chose a head who was responsible for everything that might occur in the brothel. This was the case in Nuremberg; and, after the fashion of other guilds, the licensed prostitutes took it upon themselves to prosecute persons who infringed upon their monopoly. Sometimes they were placed under the charge of a special official who decided all cases of injury committed by them or against them; in still other places a special court was created for their control. Where a brothel was let to a responsible citizen, he was

In 1367 two quarters were set apart by the Parisian authorities for prostitution, the Glatigny and the Hueleu. Great numbers of thieves, robbers, and vagabonds flocked together in these quarters, making of them veritable strongholds, whence vice and crime could raid the city with impunity. The police were defied and even royal edicts for demolishing the places were for decades set at nought.— Carlier, Les Deux Prostitutions, 11-13.